James Joyner, nonresident senior fellow for the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, writes on the Pentagon’s 2015 budget proposal for Defense One:
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel previewed the president’s five-year Pentagon budget request expected to be released next week and it is a shot across the bow at Congress. The proposal thumbing its nose at sequestration budget caps, insisting on another round of base closures, targeting popular acquisitions programs and the National Guard and otherwise flouting the expressed will of the legislative branch. The merits of these stances are debatable; that they presage a brutal fight with Capitol Hill is not.
The most brazen move was proposing spending that exceeds the Budget Control Act of 2011 ceiling by $115 billion over the next five years by the device of an off-the-books “Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative” fund to promote “readiness.”